This disclosure relates to integrated circuit devices and, more particularly, to optical data communication between integrated circuit devices.
This section is intended to introduce the reader to various aspects of art that may be related to various aspects of these techniques, which are described and/or claimed below. This discussion is believed to be helpful in providing the reader with background information to facilitate a better understanding of the various aspects of this disclosure. Accordingly, it should be understood that these statements are to be read in this light, and not as admissions of prior art.
Integrated circuit devices are often found in a variety of electronic systems, such as computers, handheld devices, portable phones, televisions, and industrial control systems. In such electronic systems, the integrated circuit devices may provide various features such as data processing and/or data storage. Accordingly, integrated circuit devices may include data processing circuits, such as a field programmable gate array (FPGA) or other processing circuitry (e.g., CPU or GPU), and data storage circuits, such as random access memory (RAM). As used herein, a “data utilization circuit” is intended to generally describe the circuits (e.g., data storage circuits and data processing circuits) that provide features within an electronic system.
To provide the various features, data utilization circuits may communicate data with one another. For example, an FPGA may communicate data to memory for storage, or memory may communicate a machine-readable instruction to the FPGA for performing a particular process. In some embodiments, the various data utilization circuits may communicate data via optical signals to improve data communication speeds and/or transmission distances. For example, a first data utilization circuit may output an electrical signal on an electrical channel, the electrical signal may be converted to an optical signal, and the optical signal may be transmitted to a second data utilization circuit via an optical channel.
In some embodiments, the data transmitted on each optical channel is based on the data output on a corresponding electrical channel. Illustratively, the first data utilization circuit may output a first electrical signal including first data on a first electrical channel and a second electrical signal including second data on a second electrical channel. The first electrical signal may then be converted to a first optical signal and transmitted to a second data utilization circuit via a first optical channel, which corresponds to the first electrical channel. Similarly, the second electrical signal may be converted to a second optical signal and transmitted to a third data utilization circuit via a second optical channel, which corresponds to the second electrical channel. In such embodiments, optical signals transmitted on an optical channel may be modified by reconfiguring the data utilization circuits. For example, to transmit the second data to the second data utilization circuit, the first data utilization circuit may be reconfigured to output the second data on the first electrical channel.
However, it may be beneficial to improve the flexibility of the optical signal communication between data utilization circuits. For example, it may be beneficial to route the second optical signal from the second electrical channel to the first optical channel without re-configuring the first data utilization circuit.